


Lab Partners

by Paigers



Series: Lab Partners [1]
Category: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Martin POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 05:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paigers/pseuds/Paigers
Summary: Junior year starts, and all things considered, Marty Addison has lucked out with his assigned lab partner in AP Chem. Bram Greenfeld is quiet and smart and a copious note-taker, and he thinks they might even be becoming friends.He continues to feel this way, right up until Bram starts dating Simon Spier. Of all the fucking people.Canon compliant. Starts a bit before the book, ends a bit after.





	Lab Partners

**Author's Note:**

> To be clear, I do not mean this fic as a justification or redemption for Martin in any way. More like a character examination...with a bunch of Bram thrown in, because I can.

**August & September**

Junior year starts, and all things considered, Marty Addison has lucked out with his assigned lab partner in AP Chem. He doesn’t really know Bram Greenfeld. He’s not actually even sure he’s ever heard him talk, even though they’ve had had a few classes together over the past couple of years. But he’s always gotten the impression that he’s one of those dudes who just sort of gets A’s in everything effortlessly.

Which is a good thing, because Mrs. Porter, the ancient AP Chem teacher, is a notorious hardass. She’s known for giving a shit ton of homework, having really tough tests, and taking assigned seating, already one of the greatest evils of the educational system, to an extreme. She assigns everybody a permanent lab partner, like in a fucking movie, and tells them that they are going to be sitting with and doing labs with this same person all year. Not just this semester, but all year.

“In the real world,” she says. “You don’t always get to pick who you work with. Actually, you almost never get to choose who you work with. Sometimes you just have to figure out how to make it work, anyway.”

This isn’t the fucking real world, but fine. Bram Greenfeld isn’t his first choice – that’s Abby Suso, the hot, funny new girl he first notices that morning in English, who is also in this class.

But, yeah, Greenfeld is just fine too. He smiles at Marty and says “Hey” when they first take their seats next to each other, but otherwise doesn’t really acknowledge him at first. Not in a rude way, but just, they don’t know each other.

And, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that Greenfeld is more than fine, because AP Chem is really fucking hard. He’d known that it would be; everybody says it is. But you’re just never prepared for it, somehow.

Greenfeld seems to be, though. He gets out a notebook on the second day of class, and just starts taking notes, like really thorough notes, without Mrs. Porter even saying anything about it. At first Marty thinks this is almost a bit pathetic. Seriously, why take notes when the teacher doesn’t say you have to? She’s just going over some basic shit, anyway.

But of course, by the end of her lecture, he’s lost. He takes out a notebook the next day, but as the days start to go by, somehow his notes never really seem as neat or as thorough as Greenfeld’s. He’s always done this, compared his work to the person’s next to him, ever since he can remember. Not as a cheating thing, but more for competitive reasons, sort of. Are they further along than he is? Do they get what’s going on?

He thinks that everybody must do this, at least sometimes, but he never sees Greenfeld look at his work. And if he notices Marty looking, he doesn’t say anything.

Somehow, it doesn’t occur to Marty for a few weeks that maybe getting A’s “effortlessly” isn’t actually a thing.

**

But anyway, August becomes September, and school falls into that same mind-numbing rhythm it always does. And before he can even realize it, it’s Wednesday the 17th, and the first major AP Chem test is in two days.

“Are you ready?” he asks Greenfeld when he sits down next to him at their lab table that day.

Greenfeld shrugs. “I guess. I’ve been trying to spend twenty or thirty minutes every night going over my notes these past couple of days. But there’s just so much, you know.”

Half an hour every day. Looking at his notes. Marty can’t even understand most of his own notes. But it’s rapidly occurring to him that his doing an hour of memorization at like midnight -- his standby for test-taking in his high school career thus far – just might not cut it for this class.

“Yeah, I’m screwed,” he tells Greenfeld. “My notes are basically illegible.”

Greenfeld laughs in a commiserating sort of way. “She lectures kind of fast, huh? I mean, I know there’s a lot of material to cover for the AP exam, but still.”

“Seriously.”

There’s a pause, then Greenfeld says, “Do you want to take pics of mine? I can’t promise they’re perfect, but I think they might be legible.”

“Dude, are you serious? If you really don’t mind…”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

But Greenfeld doesn’t have his Chem notebook with him. He’s pretty sure he left it on his desk this morning.

“I’m sorry,” Greenfeld says, looking genuinely apologetic for some reason. Another pause. “We only have til Friday. Do you want me to text you pics when I get home?”

“Yes, please,” Marty says, and he knows he sounds desperate.

They exchange numbers, and Marty is sure he’s going to have to send an awkward, groveling reminder text to Greenfeld at 6 or 7 o’clock. But to his surprise, he gets a series of texts before he even leaves school, all with pictures of perfect notes. He spends a minute looking at them, and dude, how does the guy even do that? They're ridiculously organized and comprehensive. And his handwriting doesn't slant at all, which Marty hadn't even realized was possible.

And it’s not just that he’s shocked that Greenfeld remembers, but he thinks that most people (including Marty himself) would not actually text those pics right when they got home, even if they did remember. They (he) wouldn’t want it to be overwhelmingly obvious that they went home that quickly after school, or that they cared enough to remember immediately.

 _THANK YOU you’re such a lifesaver,_ he texts Greenfeld back, after waiting a respectable four minutes to respond.

 _No problem,_ Greenfeld texts back immediately, as though he doesn’t care what Marty will think of his response time.

Marty tells himself he thinks it’s lame, but really, it’s kind of cool.

 

**October & November**

And after that first test, Greenfeld and Marty start to become, not friends, but friendly-ish. It becomes a regular thing for Greenfeld to text him his notes the day before a test or a quiz. Marty doesn’t even have to ask. They're fucking invaluable, too. He starts to get really dependent on them, because try as he might, his notes just suck. He can't keep up, and he has no idea what he's ever writing.

And Greenfeld is extremely good at labs, and Marty hates them. He does what he can, and he doesn’t think he’s really taking advantage per se. So he does exactly what Greenfeld tells him to do and writes what Greenfeld tells him to write. But he does still feel the tiniest bit guilty.

They even start to exchange more than a few words at time, multiple times a week. Nothing serious. They both have family in Savannah, and they both fucking loved _Guardians of the Galaxy,_ which came out right before school started (okay, everyone loved it, but still). Most people might not think this something to take note of – they never even talk outside of AP Chem, and they have two other classes together. Actually, Marty mostly forgets his existence until he sits next to him at the lab table every day.

But the thing is, Marty doesn’t really have a lot of close friends. Or real friends at all, if he’s honest with himself. He went to school in a different district before high school, and he just never really found a group here at Creekside, like new kids always do in movies. He’s cool with all the other Drama people, but he doesn’t really know them very well. The popular kids seem to like him – or be amused by him anyway – but class clown somehow does not equal friends. The movies don’t tell you that either.

So yeah. Talking to someone regularly about things that aren’t school is okay. Especially when it gets his mind off his brother Carter and his thing and how weird shit is at home. He has no problem with gay people, seriously, but he’s honestly a little sick of all this gay shit. Not the actual idea of dudes with other dudes or whatever – who gives a shit? But like, the pride thing. His parents have kind of gone a bit overboard, and it’s a little much. So, talking to Greenfeld or the Drama people or literally anybody else about other shit is a welcome relief.

None of this was to say, though, that he wouldn’t have switched Greenfeld out for Abby Suso in a heartbeat. His crush on her has been growing steadily since school started. She’s even hotter and cooler than he originally thought.

It occurs to him at the beginning of October that being on speaking terms with Greenfeld might be some help in this department. Abby had almost instantaneously started hanging around with and having lunch with Spier and Eisner and that whole group (which wasn’t fucking fair, but okay), and Greenfeld kind of seems to hang around in their periphery too. He and Garrett Laughlin definitely always seem to eat lunch with them, anyway.

Greenfeld doesn’t really seem like the type of dude who would be comfortable doing it, but Marty spends at least a couple Chem periods considering whether he might ask him to facilitate some kind of introduction or something. But the more he pays attention, the more obvious it is that this is a dumb idea.

The thing is, Greenfeld and Abby might eat lunch only a few feet away from each other every day, but in Chem, they don’t ever talk or acknowledge each other in any way. And she sits right in front of them. (Ok, technically, thinks he might have seen Greenfeld pick up her pencil for her once.) It’s not like it's weird, or at least he doesn’t think so. Greenfeld doesn’t really talk that much at all. It was a good idea, though.

A much better idea than the one he actually uses to try and get to know Abby Suso, as it turns out.

**

He doesn’t start to feel truly guilty about the whole thing with Spier for a few weeks, if he’s honest. It’s not like it’s that big of a deal. It’s not like he’s asking him to do anything crazy.

(Sometimes he feels weird about it when he sees Abby in Chem, though. She’s right there in front of him. Plus, he sees her in English and rehearsal every day. Did he really have to bring Spier into it?)

He notices vaguely that he doesn’t see Greenfeld at Laughlin’s Halloween party, even though he thinks he’s his best friend. But only vaguely. He can’t really get Abby (or her prom rejection) out of his head. Or Spier now, but for different reasons.

November goes by, and he sees Abby more than he’s used to, but it doesn’t really seem like he’s getting anywhere. Why the fuck isn’t Spier putting any real effort into it? It’s ridiculous.

But something that does change is his reliable lab partner. Greenfeld just starts to seem distracted. Or something. One time, right after Thanksgiving break, Marty looks over at him, and he’s just staring out the window. And there’s almost nothing written in his notebook.

Another time, he uses the wrong chemical in a lab, a mistake unheard of from him thus far, and they get a 0 for the day.

Some girl, probably.

 

**December aka The Worst Month Ever Probably**

Bram’s (at some point he starts thinking of him by his first name) distractedness only gets worse, but Marty is too fucking annoyed to be too bothered by it.

Fucking Spier what the fuck why won’t you why why why fucking Abby why.

Abby makes no effort whatsoever to talk to him when Spier’s not there. He tries to engage her in conversation in Chem a few times, tries to make her laugh, but it always just fizzles out without him as an interlocutor. He doesn’t get it. They’ve hung out. They’ve had waffles together. What is the problem here?

There’s a rehearsal the first Saturday of break, and he decides to just go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?

It turns out: her rejecting him. That’s the worst that can happen. And it fucking happens.

And look, he can’t excuse what happens next. He won’t even try. He knows he’s a dick the moment he publishes that Tumblr post. He knows he's a dick before and after Carter tells him that he is. And he knows he’s a dick when he deletes it a few days later.

It’s just that, well, he keeps thinking of Simon all curled up with Abby by those lockers at rehearsal, that smug asshole. And Carter’s home now, which doesn’t help take his mind off anything.

He knows it’s wrong. But…

But nothing. He knows.

 

**January aka lol Addison you thought December fucking sucked just watch you’ll love this shit**

The first day back after break is a nightmare.

He refuses to look at Simon – can’t look at Simon. He doesn’t know what to do, how to feel, how to just go back.

The only person who seems to notice anything wrong with him that day is Bram, who actually tries to start a conversation with him when he gets to Chem. He seems strangely upbeat.

“Are you…okay?” he asks when Marty’s responses are only “Yeah” and “Right.”

“Fine,” he answers but angles his chair away from him. Bram takes the hint.

Halfway through class, there’s a bit of a down period where Mrs. Porter’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with the projector. The PowerPoint she’s showing them keeps coming in and out of focus, and it’s hard to concentrate. The technical difficulties last long enough that the class starts to talk amongst themselves. Marty stays silent, feeling entirety phased out of the world around him. That is, until he hears Abby’s lab partner, Eve, say Simon’s name.

“ – is Simon okay?” she’s asking Abby.

“I think so,” Abby responds. “I mean, not great, obviously. I think he’s still feeling pretty shitty. But he’s, you know, going to be okay.”

“I hope so,” Eve says. “Does he know who did it?”

“Yeah,” Abby says. “But he won’t say. I think he just kind of wants to forget about the whole thing, honestly.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Eve says. “It’s just so fucked up. Like, who would even…?”

“I know,” Abby says.

Marty looks down, but notices out of the corner of his eye that it seems like Bram was paying attention to the conversation, too.

Well, Abby doesn’t know that it’s him. Simon didn’t tell anybody. Which means, it occurs to him, that Bram wouldn’t know either. He had spent the last few days of break miserable over the thought that Simon would tell everybody at that stupid lunch table and in Drama, and he would lose every single one of his friends/acquaintances.

Apparently not. That’s something.

**

He tries to talk to Simon after rehearsal. He just can’t believe that those guys would do that. And right in front of Ms. Albright. What year was it again?

He doesn’t expect it exactly, but he hopes that once he explains how sorry he is, Simon will understand and maybe they might actually kind of go back to being friend-ish again.

But Simon tells him to fuck off, which he deserves. It’s not surprising, but it still sucks. A lot.

And he doesn’t really know what to do, now. There’s no way to make this better.

**

A few days go by, and he starts to feel even more distanced from everyone else. Like he’s there, but not really there. He feels so damn terrible about the whole thing, and there’s just nothing that he can do about it. It doesn’t matter. His guilt doesn’t matter.

But he does start to notice that Bram seems a little off, too. His note-taking seems less…enthusiastic, which is a weird way to think about note-taking, but there you have it. He doesn’t talk to Marty much, and just overall seems down.

Must be _some_ girl.

And it’s this, the shared misery, that reminds him that he really does like Bram. He's an athlete and he's always with Laughlin, but kinda seems like a loner too, in some way.

It’s weird. Honestly, he’s not even half as upset about Abby not being interested than he is about the way he hurt Simon, who he genuinely liked. He kind of missed having a reason to talk to him, not like that or anything, but it’s true. (Did he just no-homo himself to himself? God, that’s pathological.) So, he could use a friend.

“Have you seen the trailer for _Jurassic World_?” he asks him during a lab, a couple weeks after break ends.

Bram looks at him and smiles a little bit. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m really not sure how to feel about it.”

“Me neither. Probably be worth seeing, though.”

“I guess. Seems like one of the more pointless remakes, though. Once you’ve seen one movie with a bunch of dinosaurs wreaking havoc on society…”

“Ha, you’ve seen them all. Better effects now, though.”

“True.”

And it’s cool, talking to someone like normal again. Drama is just weird lately, since Simon and Abby are both there.

**

A couple days later, when Bram texts him the notes for the next test, he responds, _Dude idk what I’d do in this class without you._

 _Fail,_ Bram texts back.

 _Well yeah probably that,_ he replies. _I guess I’m just trying to say thank you again._

_No problem again._

**

The day of that test, Friday, Marty asks Bram what the date is. Bram slides his scantron over to show him where he’s written “1/23/15.” But Marty notices something else.

“Holy shit, your name is Abraham,” he says.

“Yeah,” Bram says, frowning. “Most Brams are actually Abrahams.”

“That would make sense,” he says. “But I didn’t know that. I’ve never met another Bram. Shit, I’ve gone to school with you for forever now without knowing that. Dude, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Bram says, but he continues to frown. “I guess…maybe a lot of people might not know that.”

“Well, I’ve never heard anyone call you Abraham.”

“Yeah. That’s…true.”

He gets that weird feeling you get when you’re having a conversation with someone, and you’re talking about two separate things.

**

Later that day, he does something stupid. He tells Abby. He tells her everything. It’s dumb, and he’s not entirely sure why he does it. He just needs to tell someone, to absolve himself some way.

When he finishes, sputtering apologies, she says, “Okay. Fuck you, Marty,” and walks away.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

**

He’s dreading seeing her again on Monday. When he walks into Chem, she is deep in conversation with Eve, and she appears to take no notice of him.

Then Bram walks into the room, and that’s when things get real interesting.

She swivels around on her chair as he sits down, and smiles insanely widely at him. “ _Hi_ Bram,” she says, stretching “hi” into about five different syllables.

Marty looks at him, and to his shock, sees that he is blushing profusely.

“Hi Abby,” Bram says quietly. But he’s smiling like he can’t help himself.

“How are _you,_ today?” she asks.

“I’m good, Abby.”

“Yeah, I got that impression,” Abby says, but can’t say anything more to Bram, as Mrs. Porter calls the class to attention.

Is something going on between them? Has Abby been the girl he’s been moody about? But wait, she’s been walking around holding hand with fucking Eisner (ugh). Or maybe that’s why he’s been moody? Aren’t he and Eisner friends, though?

He spends more time than he’d like to admit that day considering this.

It’s not until about 8 o’clock when he’s browsing Facebook in that disinterested way everyone does that he understands.

_Bram Greenfeld is in a relationship with Simon Spier._

Marty just starts laughing.

Because of fucking course.

**February**

He doesn’t quite know how to act around Bram after that. If he knows the role that Marty played in Simon’s outing, he doesn’t act like it. He probably doesn’t, if Simon hadn’t even told Abby, or anyone else, from what he can tell. He had never responded to Marty's email, though, so who knew? Still, Marty makes a point of not trying to chat with Greenfeld as much. It just feels wrong, like he’s lying to him somehow.

Some other things definitely change in Chem, though.

For one, that thing about how Abby and Bram don’t really talk? That stops being true. Real fast.

It starts to become pretty common for Bram to walk into class and immediately get dragged into whatever conversation Abby and Eve are having. And it’s not like he becomes Mr. Extrovert or anything, but his back and forth with Abby seems pretty easy and comfortable. She likes to tease him about Simon, and Marty can tell Bram doesn’t really mind. In fact, he seems downright happy about the whole thing. Sometimes he even teases her back about Eisner.

Abby just pretends that Marty isn’t there at all, which is probably the best that he could have hoped for.

Bram doesn’t seem to notice that he and Marty don’t talk as much anymore. He thinks it might be that he knows what Marty did, but it’s probably just that he doesn’t register a whole lot that conflicts with his contentment with his newfound dating situation. Also, with Abby taking every chance she can to turn around and talk to him, he has plenty to occupy him in Chem without Marty.

It’s not even like he and Greenfeld were actual friends. But with how weird it is with Simon and Abby – and with the rest of the Drama people by default, though they don’t know anything – it still feels like a loss somehow.

But it’s another one he guesses he deserves.

**  
He lures himself into sort of a false sense of security with the whole Bram thing. He thinks that either he already knows about Marty’s problematic history with his boyfriend, and has just chosen to not acknowledge it, or that Simon has just decided to keep the whole ordeal to himself permanently. As it turns out, he is wrong on both counts.

Almost halfway through February, Bram walks into class (with Abby now, which has become normal) and sits down. “Hey,” Marty greets him, as usual.

Bram doesn’t look at him or acknowledge that he has said anything. And he maintains an almost stony silence as they do that day’s lab, only speaking when absolutely necessary to communicate about their work. He doesn’t give him any dirty looks or anything. He basically pretends that Marty isn’t even there, like Abby does.

Doesn’t take a genius to work out what’s happened.

The week after that, Bram doesn’t text him his notes for the test on Friday, for the first time.

So. Yeah. That’s that.

**March**

 

 

**April**

The next time he works up the courage to talk to Greenfeld about anything not directly related to a lab, it’s two weeks before the AP exam, and he’s a bit on edge. He had considered not taking the stupid thing (it’s highly encouraged, but not required) because Chem has been a shit show since Greenfeld stopped helping him. But he signs up and pays the fee anyway as it’ll be less difficult than having to make some excuse to his parents. They expect things from him and shit.

They’re doing a lab that day – their last one – and he probably could have found a better way to start the conversation.

“Look,” he says. “I know you hate me and everything but – ”

“I don’t hate you, Marty,” Greenfeld interrupts softly, not taking his eyes off the beaker of liquid he’s examining.

“Coulda fooled me. But whatever, that’s not the point. I just – this is really awkward – wanted to say that, I don’t even know. That I get it – I don’t – we have to sit next to each other for the next month and a half still. And, look, Spier and I are sort of…talking again. Kind of. Ish. We had a halfway normal conversation in rehearsal for the spring play the other day.”

“Yeah,” Greenfeld says, “He told me that.”

“Right. Well, all I’m saying is, I’m not trying to be your friend or anything. I just want to clear the air.”

There is a ringing silence for a few moments. At first, Marty thinks that he is just not going to respond.

“I don’t hate you,” Greenfeld finally says, again. “It’s not my place to hate you. It’s just weird, okay? All those months I was trying to get you through this class, and the whole time, you were…”

So he knows everything. “Blackmailing your future boyfriend,” Marty finishes for him. One of the things he’s realizes over the last few months is that he can’t really confront his behavior unless he uses that word.

“Well, yeah,” Greenfeld says. He pauses again, then looks down. “But more specifically, using _me_ to blackmail him.”

“What?”

Another longish pause. “Those emails you were gonna put on Tumblr? They were from me. That stuff was about me,” he finally says.

“Oh,” Marty says, dumbfounded. He guesses that makes about as much sense as some dude from California. He feels as though he has somehow done yet another thing wrong. Hurt someone else.

“I…deleted them. I don’t think I was ever actually gonna post them. And dude, I had no idea they were from you. Seriously.”

For the first time, Greenfeld looks him directly in the eyes. “What difference does any of that make?”

It doesn’t, of course. That was a stupid thing to say.

“Yeah,” Marty says. “Well. I’m sorry. Really.”

“I believe you,” Greenfeld says. “Doesn’t change much, though.”

“No,” Marty agrees. He’s Spier’s boyfriend. He has to have Spier’s back. Just the way it is.

They don’t say much else.

**May**

Nine days before the AP exam, Marty is driving home when his phone starts buzzing. And buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. At least 10 (if not more) text alerts in a row. God, who was dying?

When he gets to a red light, he checks his phone. And it’s pages and pages of extremely organized notes from Bram Greenfeld, a few months’ worth, by the looks of it. It’s just the notes, though. There’s no message or anything.

 _Thank you so much,_ he replies. He doesn’t get a response. He doesn’t expect one.

**June**

The exam goes okay. Not great, but fine. He thinks he probably scrapes a passing “3” grade,

Junior year ends, and all things considered, he has lucked out with his assigned lab parter.


End file.
